The Candidates And The Court

Election Day, 2024 is just around the corner, and the landscape is churning. Trump is out doing his "man of the people" bit, which he does generally well and occasionally brilliantly. Between his defiant fist in the air after being shot and his most recent stint as a fry cook at a McDonalds, he has an instinct for showmanship that drives his detractors to distraction. Indeed, the Left's outraged response to Trump's McD's stunt tells us all how good it was.

Harris's earlier effort to engage in a basement campaign, in no small part to hide her glaring inability to speak extemporaneously without babbling out word salad, wasn't working, so she was forced to go out and at least pretend to interact with the press. That isn't working either, because it isn't real. As most recently exhibited by this "pre-determined questions" Kinsley Gaffe, and by the contrast between the coddling Harris got from CBS and the more pointed questioning she got from Fox News's Bret Baier. Nevertheless, despite the momentum continuing to swing away from her, the Harris campaign is still doing its best to keep Ms. Word Salad from any unscripted interactions.

Clearly, they know it's a huge problem, but their only hope at this late stage is that antipathy to Trump outweighs Harris's obvious flaws.

And as-obvious political positions.

Meanwhile, a right-leaning social media group I belong to is coalescing into two camps: Never-Trump (NT) purists and utilitarians. The NT arguments usually start with an anchor position, which can be January 6th, "Trump is not a conservative," "Trump is wrong on this policy," or others, but always seem to carry an end-conclusion that, if we are 'rid of this meddlesome Trump,' proper conservatism can re-emerge and the country can get back on track.

I think that's a nirvana fallacy. As I've repeatedly noted, Trump is a symptom, not a cause, and the same populist reaction to the Left's excesses will only be magnified by a Harris Presidency that continues the same policies as the Biden presidency. Especially with regard to the border. Trump differentiated himself from a field of 17 candidates in 2016 by highlighting immigration, and the voter base responded. The problem is miles worse now than then, and you can take it to the bank that Harris's blather about fixing the border will dissipate like a fart in a windstorm the moment she gets elected. Any GOP candidate in 2028 will necessarily have to prioritize the same things that Trump has.

Where the NT camp goes still, for the most part, is in what a Harris Presidency would produce. Beyond the continued economic class warfare, continued rampant spending that will re-spike inflation, continued assaults on free speech, religious liberty, privacy, gun and other rights, continued fecklessness on the world stage, continued green fascism, continued efforts to buy voters and expand unaffordable entitlements, lies my biggest fear: the promised attack on the Supreme Court.

Harris et al are utterly outraged (funny how often that is) by Trump's placement of three jurists that tipped the Court in a conservative direction. In typical spoiled brat manner (yeah, Trump's got a lot of that too), they so cannot abide the "to the victor go the spoils" reality of it all that they want to wreck the Court.

Whether it be by imposing term limits (Amendment required), Congressional ethics oversight (Amendment probably required), or by "packing it" (Amendment not required) via the addition of several additional judges, their goal is to turn the Court into a subordinate arm of the other branches of government, one that will be little more than a rubber stamp to the Left's agenda. They won't get the Amendments, that's for sure, but court packing is certainly on the table.

And, indeed, quite likely should the Dems get control of the Senate.

This would be utterly devastating for the nation's core premises of separation of powers and of limited government. As it is today, the Court is the only branch functioning in anything resembling a proper manner. Congress has abandoned its role as lawmaker to the Executive, and the Executive is grossly overstepping its mandate as a result. Neutering the Court would take us a giant step forward to an imperial Presidency, which the Left only wants when their person is in charge. That they don't see the peril of the pendulum tells us that they feel more than they think.

Now, it is true that the electoral map substantially favors the GOP this cycle. The gambling markets predict a 52-48 Republican majority at an 84% probability. But, that presumes the GOP takes Ohio, and if Harris wins, her coattails could keep Ohio blue, leaving a single seat majority. Beyond this election, the mid-term 2026 map isn't as favorable to the GOP, with 20 Red seats and 13 Blue sets up for election. Flipping one seat would leave the nation hoping that a principled Democrat would stand in the way of eliminating the filibuster and thereby enabling the Court packing the Left so desires.

I consider the threat to the Court so fundamental that it is my prime differentiator in deciding which cup of poison I'd prefer. Trump, for all his faults and for all the questionable-to-bad policies he's peddling, did very well in his Court selections.

Very well.

Not Clarence Thomas well, but liberty lovers got Gorsuch, and that's a big deal by itself.

A second Trump presidency would not only pre-empt the Left's sinister plans for the Court, it would allow Alito (74yo) and Thomas (76yo) to retire and be replaced by like-minded jurists.

As regular readers know, I am no fan of the Untethered Orange Id. That said, in a binary choice between him and Harris, it's a no-brainer. Harris's threat to the Court, on top of a laundry list of destructive and stupid policies and plans, makes it easy for me to favor Trump's return to the White House. Yes, his term will be tumultuous, but I'd rather tumult than destruction.